Amazing statues of ancient gods and wonderful creatures are on display at a museum in Berlin, Germany. The statues were once part of a palace that dates back 3,000 years. It was built by a tribal prince. The palace was located in what is now Tell Halaf, Syria. There are statues of giant creatures that once guarded the entrance. Stone relief panels line the outer walls. In the early twentieth century, these items were dug up. They were treasured as souvenirs from the ancient past. A few decades later, they were broken apart during a war. Since then, experts have carefully reconstructed the works of art, piece by piece.

it was surely an odd creature that one made up by reading the historians first and the poets afterwards a worm winged like an eagle; the spirit of life and elegance and charm,   in a kitchen chopping up suet. but these creatures, monst'r however entertaining to the imagination, hast no existence in fact. what one might doth to bringeth h'r to life wast to bethink poetically and prosaically at one and the same moment,   thus keeping in toucheth with fact—that the lady is mrs martin, ag'd thirty-six, did dress in blue, wearing a black coxcomb and brown shoeth; but not losing sight of fiction eith'r—that the lady is a vessel in which all s'rts of spirits and f'rces art coursing and flashing p'rpetually. the moment, howev'r, yond one tries this method with the elizabethan mistress, one brancheth of illumination fails; one is did hold up by the scarcity of facts.   one knoweth nothing detailed, nothing p'rfectly true and substantial about h'r.   hist'ry scarcely mentions h'r.   and i did turn to professeth'r trevelyan again to seeth what hist'ry meanteth to that gent.   i hath found by looking at his chapt'r headings yond t meanteth.

what is the book idiot with the brocken tester